Winning Trades Turn into Losses Near the 3rd Month

Hi everyone,

I hope you are doing well

I have been experiencing something repeatedly that I believe is because of my psychology.
I have found my strategy and It has been working well. The only thing is in my backtests once I couldn’t manage my trades well in the third month of trading in that account and things went wrong. After that, I tried it on another account, and things went wrong again near the third month of trading.
I now believe there is something wrong stuck with me regarding my OCD. I guess I believe things will go wrong in my trading when I get near the third month of trading It has become consistent and bothering me and this is a big bug for me.
Like a kid being bitten by a dog and every time she/he sees the dog she remembers that experience.

My question from you guys is what do you suggest I do regarding this? I honestly thought sharing this with you might help me find a solution for this.

I look forward to your ideas
Thank you and best regards

Hi, did you try to automate this strategy and supervising it? Regards Greg

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If things repeatedly go wrong near the third month why not take your profits at the end of the second month and then start over again?

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I used to say there are two possibilities. Either you do things differently, or the market does.

If you are the problem, just stop it - trade the same way as you used to and all will be well.
If the market was operating differently, you would have seen the change in the charts and you wouldn’t have to ask the question.

These days I picture a third possibility - all strategies naturally cycle between performance and under-performance. I can’t say why, and it isn’t visible through TA. Performance on an individual target market cycles down and later back up again over a long period of time - months. Performance on each individual target will eventually cycle back into successful territory.

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Hi @21firestar Good to see you back and your system has been working well.

It does sound a bit like your OCD, you say “I believe there is something stuck”
I’m no psychologist, but I had a friend with OCD and he would come up with strange notions. It’s good that you talk about it, OCD can be very frustrating.

It’s very normal to have a losing month, Tom Hougaard has just had two horrendous months and wiped 40% of his bank, he’s really peed off about it and slowing down his trading to build confidence. Perhaps you had a bad month and you freaked out, try reading Mark Douglas chapter3 page49 - you know he’s good on the subject.

Don’t be afraid to come back and have more of our ‘pocket book psychology’ I think @THE_GOATE has a great idea - ‘just forget the 3rd month’.:face_with_monocle:

All the best! :sunglasses:

5 Likes

not really. Only I have a plan written and am working based on that